The Slow Drinker
by Jynxfreak
Summary: 'Shadow Survives' story, but not the regular "Nursed back to health by soulmate/future love" type. Humourous one to come after, if people ask ^_^


[Well, this is kind of a side-story from my Eleanor Chronicles one… what happened after? Here it is.

By now I should have my next Chronicles one up, though, so if you've read 'The Speed Of Sound' then this will spoil the 'to be continued' at the end, so you might want to read the next one before you read this one. Enjoy!]

****

A Million To One

"Science, and logical thinking can figure out that a lot of things are millions-to-one chances.

Experience shows you that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten."

**__**

Tails

Tails mulled over his glass of pub squash as he watched Sonic sidelong. He had tried everything! It was ever since that bloody ARK incident.

***

"Sonic! You made it—hey, where's…" Even Amy's excited greeting was brought up short by the look on Sonic's face. He was keeping it carefully blank, but everybody realised what had happened when Sonic raised his right hand, opening it to show everyone what he had. It was a gold-coloured ring, but no ordinary one.

It happened to be one of the gold circlets that Shadow had worn on his wrists. The whole room was silent as Sonic tipped his hand and let the ring clatter to the floor. Five sets of eyes watched it fall, and watched Sonic walk to one of the huge windows in the room. He put his hand up against the cold glass and most of the people in the room had to strain to hear him whisper,

"Sayonara… Shadow the Hedgehog…"

***

The orange fox let that memory slide away as he took a sip from his glass. Life, he contemplated, had different meanings to everyone. For some it was a mission, a job to fulfil. To some it was doing what they believed in, whether that be for sinister or pure-hearted reasons. And to some, it was just an excuse to have a good time. Tails had once imagined Sonic's outlook on life to be just that- one huge game. But as the years went by, Tails' ideas changed. What had once been a new, interesting game had become a full time job, and eventually a… a duty.

And what about the views Tails himself had? That was a bit trickier. He grappled for accurate descriptions as one grapples with soap dropped in the bath-tub. Assertive? Hardly. And not 'destiny', either. It hadn't started as a mission for Tails. He had been just another carefree, innocent kid with some good friends. 

Then, when Sonic had needed backup, it was Tails' job to help as much as he could. And Tails knew that sometimes Sonic just wouldn't have the time or the need for Tails' help, but Tails trusted Sonic, and almost let Sonic's life steer where his was going, too. Although, he did interject when the combined lives started to tip toward an endless black hole.

***

"Sonic… Hey! Sonic! SONIC!" the speed demon himself finally came to the door, and Tails was unnerved to see him in such bad condition. There were dark circles under his eyes, his fur was starting to look scruffy, and by his breath, he had been drinking. Heavily.

"Nuuughya…" he said, then blinked and cleared his throat. "Sorry. Hi, Tails. What are you doing here?" Tails crossed his arms and a stern, protective look marked his features.

"I am here," he said determinedly, "To give you a wake-up call. You'd better let me in." Sonic, in his nastily hung-over state, stood aside meekly to let Tails in. He simply followed when Tails led him to the bathroom, and only protested slightly when Tails shoved him in the shower. Then came the cold water.

Sssssssppppsshhhhhhhhhhtttttttt!

"AAAAAH! TAILS!! WHAT THE HELL-" Sonic leapt out of the shower and stood on the mat, dripping and shivering. He was angry, but also confused at the same time. "What the hell did you do that for?!" he exclaimed, seizing a towel and rubbing briskly at his quills.

"I want you to snap out of it. You've been holed up in here for most of the day! And…" something that had been niggling at the edge of his mind came to focus. "And you must have had a LOT of grog in here, seeing as you haven't come out to get more. That's shocking, Sonic!" The hedgehog in question turned his attention to the rest of his damp fur.

"Well Geez, sorry if I'm not keeping up to you're living standards, _Miles_, but killing someone does that to you!" Tails resisted the urge to take a step backward. Sonic only used Tails' real name when he was furious with him.

"Killing?! You never killed anyone! It wasn't your fault that Shadow fell!" Sonic suddenly looked up and fixed Tails with an intense, burning stare. He suddenly looked more intimidating.

"It _was_ my fault, Tails." He said softly, somehow more frightening than when he had raised his voice. "It _was_. I worked with him that whole time, took advantage of his strength and speed, but in all that I didn't notice his energy failing. I _assumed_ that since mine was all right that his would be, too. It wasn't. And I could have jumped down after him, but there was a selfish little voice in my head saying, 'He's going to die, and if you try to help him, _you_ will too, do you want that?' and I listened to it. Maybe I didn't kill him outright, but it's still my fault." Tails opened his mouth to object, but Sonic cut him off.

"Get out," he said softly, turning his back on Tails. "I don't want you near me. Get out." Tails felt as if he had been mortally wounded, just by those softly spoken words. His tails drooped to the floor as he slowly walked out, not even pausing to say goodbye. Sonic turned and stared at the closed door for quite some time after Tails had left.

***

Well, that had certainly been the wrong way to go about things. Tails realised later that he had been trying to maintain the balance, trying to fix the ying-yang. One friend was being quiet and reserved, so it was fitting that the other should be loud and assertive. It hadn't worked.

***

Tails had retreated to his workshop, and started to fix some gadget that had never worked. He usually did this when he wanted to get something out of his mind, but as he toiled with the solder and the screwdriver, his thoughts kept circling back around to Sonic.

Two gadgets later Tails had decided to try and make up with Sonic.

One and a half more and he considered getting around to it in the near future.

He had completely finished said half when a sudden, Spontaneous Thought hit him. Spontaneous Thoughts didn't happen all that often, and they were usually brilliant, as if his subconscious had been working on something and finally, upon deciding that the masterpiece was complete, turned it over to the other side of the brain.

Shadow could have survived.

Tails was at first skeptical, but as he picked the thought apart, he realised that it could be true. The facts were all there. Shadow was in his Hyper form when he fell. Sonic had withstood monstrously high falls before. Sonic was just like shadow. Or rather, the other way around. Also, Sonic had said that he hadn't _actually_ seen Shadow burn up in the atmosphere, but seeing as there was no way for him to get back up, it was a safe assumption. Almost. And Tails could have sworn he saw a purple flash outside the window, briefly.

He excitedly jumped to his feet and began to burrow in the wreckage that was his workroom for his Global Positioning System; that is, his GPS. He checked a couple of references, and an hour of calculations later he stood back from his blackboard and grinned. On his way out to the hangar, he grabbed a map and then hurried off to the Tornado.

***

Tails smiled briefly as he remembered that thought. He paused for a moment and reflected that he really loved those wonderful, wonderful spontaneous thoughts. He realised that he'd reached the bottom of his glass of pub squash and hailed the bartender down for another one. As he poured it, Tails turned to survey the smoky interior of the bar. He and sonic had wound up here two hours ago, and all Sonic had done was stare into his drink. Tails had read somewhere once that 'Life was always a bit hazy and unfocused, so if you looked at it through the bottom of a glass it all straightened out'. Tails could almost believe that Sonic was thinking something along the lines of this.

***

"I thought I told you to leave." Sonic said, with venomous barbs to his words as he stood in the doorway facing Tails. The fox was relieved to find that Sonic's condition had improved, even if his mood hadn't. Well, Tails could fix that!

"There's a chance that Shadow survived the fall." This blunt sentence shocked sonic so much that he suddenly forgot to be angry at Tails. 

"R…really?" he whispered, managing to sit down on a beanbag that was conveniently by the door. Tails nodded and sat down beside him.

"Yep. I had a Spontaneous Thought." He said, and Sonic nodded as if this had been a half-hour discussion. You had to respect those things. "I worked it out, and we've got a radius of about 50 k's that he could possibly be in, dead or alive." Tails bit his lip. He didn't tell Sonic that if Shadow _had_ survived, that he probably wouldn't be in too good a condition.

And anyway, Sonic had already jumped to his feet, suddenly his old, energetic self, and practically carried Tails out of the room at top speed, heading for the Tornado.

***

**__**

Sonic

That had been useless. For a few short hours, Sonic had been optimistic about Shadow having survived. 

But… He and Tails had searched every inch of that 50 k radius, but found nothing. Well, almost nothing. There was one area, which Tails said had good chances of being the spot, that had a long strip of ripped-up turf as if something had skidded to a stop. Sonic didn't think it was the right spot though. He suspected Shadow would be lying in a crater somewhere, or at least collapsed at the end of said skid marks. And with good reason- one had trouble not getting hurt when falling through earth's atmosphere at shockingly high speeds.

One had trouble thinking when his glass was empty.

Sonic caught the bartender's eye and ordered another schooner of beer. A guy sitting next to him, wearing a heavy coat and a large akubra hat with a snakeskin tied around it seemed to take interest. Sonic didn't notice, however, and looked straight down into his drink, deciding that these were _much_ better thinking conditions.

"Ya look a bit down," Said a voice from under the hat. Sonic detected a slightly forced Russian accent.

"Yeah," he answered vaguely.

"Want to get it off your chest? Sometimes a silent listener can help." Sonic considered this.

"Yeah, Ok. Well, I had this …friend, I guess. He was alright- started a bit rocky, well actually I guess we started off as enemies, but anyway we got over that. He helped me with this huge job that I had, but I didn't know that he was running low on energy. He finally ran so dry that he fell off the… uh, fell from where we were doing this job- it was pretty high up, and I tried to save him, but I guess I didn't try hard enough. He died." The stranger nodded, seeming to take this all in.

"And you think it's your fault." Sonic nodded.

"Yeah. I keep thinking that I could have done more." The stranger chuckled and spoke again, the accent gone. And that voice… well, it was hauntingly familiar.

"You did as much as you could. And he doesn't hate you for it, you know…" Sonic became confused.

"How would you…!" The stranger stuck a thumb under the brim of his hat and tilted it up, to reveal laughing red eyes. Red, freshly-spilled-blood red. Sonic nearly had a heart attack.

"Shadow?!" The black hedgehog had to grab Sonic's shoulder in a desperate attempt to keep him from falling off his bar stool.

"Yeah, it's me." He said, the dark air he had held before seemed to have partly lifted.

"I thought you were dead! Or at least…" Sonic looked him over. "…Or at least injured. In fact… What the?!" he asked, confused again. Shadow thumped himself on the chest.

"I am built," he said solemnly, managing to keep all humour out of his face. "Like a brick shit house. Indestructible. I _told_ you that I'm the ultimate life form. Well, all the damage was done to my hyper form, so I chaos controlled out of trouble and landed in this lovely grassy meadow. So I just sat there for a while, watching butterflies and thinking, and then I realised that what I really needed was a drink! And here I am," he said, looking Sonic straight in the eye. "And here you are. I had resolved to come find you after my drink, to talk about stuff… you know, the ARK and everything… but it looks like you came to me. And anyway," he looked back to his middy of beer, which was only half empty, "I'm a slow drinker."

****

End


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